CARY AND JACQUELINE
At supper table that evening at Fontenoy, Ludwell Cary said something
complimentary to the prisoner in the blue room. Fairfax Cary fired up.
"You are too easy, Ludwell! Lewis Rand, I warn you, is a dangerous man!
Serve him once, and you serve him once too often!--begging your pardon,
Colonel Churchill!"
"We could hardly have left him, you know," reasoned his host
good-naturedly, "on the roadside, and Dick Wood's the nearest house! And
once within a man's doors, every attention, of course, must be shown.
But, as you say, he is a dangerous fellow."
"Dangerous fiddlesticks!" growled Major Churchill from the other side of
the table, where he sat at Jacqueline's right hand. "I would have as
soon called old Gideon Rand dangerous! Like father, like son. You may be
sure that this fellow's spirit rolls tobacco. Maybe now and then it
breaks a colt.
"Dangerous' implies power to be dangerous," said Cary, "and conversely
power to be humane. A turn, and all the strength of the man may flow
toward good."
"A fool and his doctrine!" snapped Major Edward. "I do not expect grapes
from thistles, or a silk purse from a sow's ear."
"Tut, tut, Ned! The man who carries this county may be a damned
Republican, but he is not a fool," pronounced Colonel Dick. "Jacqueline,
my dear, another cup of coffee."
"If we were all as good as gold," said Unity pensively, "and as wise
as--as Socrates, and wore black cockades, and cared only for the
Washington March, and hated Buonaparte, and the Devil, how tiresome life
would be!--Myself, I like variety and the Marseillaise!"
"Then you differ from the other rogues only in liking the Rogue's
March," said Uncle Edward. "Jacqueline, more sugar!"
The younger Cary rushed to Miss Dandridge's defence. "Well, sir, in
itself the Marseillaise is a very noble air. It is better than
Jefferson's March!"
"Oh, a very good air to go to the gallows by!" snapped Uncle Edward.
"Jacqueline, some cream!"
"Well, well," said his brother amicably, from the head of the table, "we
must care for a man when he's wounded at our door, friend or foe,
Federalist or damned Republican. Noblesse oblige. I was glad enough the
night my mare Nelly threw me, coming home from Maria Erskine's wedding,
to hear Bob Carter's voice behind me! And if Gideon Rand was a surly old
heathen, he broke colts well, and he rolled tobacco well. We'll treat
his son like a Christian."
"And he'll repay you like a Turk!" broke out Major Edward. "I tell you
it is bred in the bone--"
"Mr. Rand is our guest," said Jacqueline, in a clear voice, from her
place behind the coffee urn. Her hands made a little noise amid the
rosebud china. "Mr. Cary, may I not pour you another cup?--Caleb, Mr.
Cary's cup.--Bring more waffles, Scipio."
"The work at Greenwood is nearly finished, sir," remarked Ludwell Cary,
addressing his host. "I rode over this afternoon, and the men assure me
that the house will soon be habitable. Fair and I have no excuse for
staying longer."
"Then stay without excuse," answered Colonel Dick heartily. "Fontenoy
will miss you--eh, Unity, eh, Jacqueline?"
"It will indeed," said Jacqueline, with a smile; and Unity, "Will I have
time to order a black scarf from Baltimore? Will you leave us mourning
rings?"
"If Miss Dandridge would accept another fashion of ring!" cried Fairfax
Cary, and all at table laughed. Scipio took away the rosebud china, and
laid the purple dessert service for the strawberries and floating island
and Betty Custis cake. Caleb placed the decanters of claret and Madeira,
and the Fontenoy men began to talk of horse-racing, of Mustapha,
Nonpareil, York, and Victor.
Jacqueline and Unity, leaving the gentlemen at their wine, came out into
the broad hall and stood at the front door looking out at the coloured
clouds above the hills. They supped early at Fontenoy, and the evening
was yet rosy.
"He is going to speak to-night," said Unity, with conviction. "It is
written in his eye."
"If you mean Mr. Cary--"
"Whom else should I mean? What are you going to say to him, Jacqueline?
I want you to say Yes, and I want you to say No."
"Don't, Unity--"
"If you say Yes, you will have Greenwood and the most charming husband
in the world, and be envied of every girl in the county; and if you say
No, I'll have you still--"
"I shall say No."
"What ails you, Jacqueline? I could swear that you're in love, and yet I
don't believe you are in love with Ludwell Cary!--though I am sure you
ought to be. It's not Mr. Lee, nor Mr. Page, nor Jack Martin,
nor--you're never in love with Fairfax Cary?"
Jacqueline laughed, "How absurd, Unity!--though may be some day I shall
love him as a cousin!"
Unity regarded her with a puzzled gathering of black brows. "There's no
one else that by any stretch of imagination I can believe you in love
with--unless it's Mr. Pincornet!"
"Oh, now you certainly have it!" cried Jacqueline, with another
tremulous laugh. She released herself from her cousin's arm. "I am going
to tell Deb good-night. And Unity--I don't want Mr. Cary to speak
to-night, nor to-morrow night, nor any other night! I'll stay at
Fontenoy--I'll stay at Fontenoy and care for Aunt Nancy and Deb and
Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward. I'll dance at your wedding, Unity, but
you'll not dance at mine!"
She was gone. Unity sat down upon the porch steps and began to name upon
her fingers the eligible young men of three counties. In her anxiety to
account for Jacqueline's pallor and the dark beneath her eyes, she went
far afield, but she met with no success. "It's not one of them!" she
sighed at last. "And yet, she's changed--"
Jacqueline went slowly upstairs, a slender figure in white, touching
with her hand the polished balustrade. When she reached the long and
wide upper hall, she passed steadily along it, but she turned her eyes
upon a door at the far end, the door of the blue room. Arrived in her
own cool and fragrant chamber, she found Deb already asleep in the small
bed, her yellow hair spread upon the pillow, her gown open at the
throat, a rag doll in the hollow of her arm. Upon the floor, with her
head against the bed, sat Miranda, as fast asleep as her mistress. At
Jacqueline's touch she awoke, smiled widely, and was on her feet with a
spring. "Yaas, Miss Jacqueline, I done put Miss Deb to bed. Mammy Chloe
say dat niggah Joab don' know nothin' 'bout er broken ahm, an' she too
busy in de blue room. Yaas'm, I done mek Miss Deb wash her face an' say
her prayers. Kin I go now?"
Alone, Jacqueline stood for a minute beside the sleeping child, then
bent and kissed Deb's brown neck. Moving to a window, she sat down
before it, resting her arm upon the sill and her head upon her arm.
Outside the window grew a giant fir tree, shading the room, and giving
it at times an aspect too cold and northern. But Jacqueline loved the
tree, and loved and fed the birds that in winter perched upon the dark
boughs. Now, between the needles, the eastern sky looked blue and cold.
Jacqueline, sitting idle, felt her eyes fill with slow tears. They did
not fall. She was not lacking in self-control, and she told herself that
of late she had wept too often. She sat very still, her head bowed upon
her listless arm, while the moments passed, bearing with them pictures
seen through unshed tears. She was living over the days of the
Three-Notched Road, and she beheld each shifting scene by the light of a
passion that she believed to be unreasonable, unnatural, secret, and
without hope. Her uncle's voice came to her from the hall below.
"Jacqueline, Jacqueline!" She arose, bathed her eyes, and went
downstairs.
It was the custom of the family to gather after supper upon the great
white pillared porch, and to sit through the twilight. The men smoked
slowly and reflectively, the women sat with folded hands, watching the
last glow upon the hills, and the brightening of the evening star;
dreamily listening to the choir of frogs, the faint tinkle of cowbells,
the bleating of folded lambs, and the continual rustle of the poplar
leaves.
Jacqueline took her seat beside Unity. Colonel Churchill, in his
especial chair, was smoking like a benevolent volcano; at a small table
Major Edward was playing Patience. On the broad porch steps below
Jacqueline and Unity half sat, half lay, the two Carys. The fireflies
were beginning to show, and out of the distance came a plaintive
_Whip-poor-will--Whip-poor-will!_
"I shall have," said Ludwell Cary, "the vines at Greenwood trained like
these. There could be no better way."
"Is the drawing-room finished?" asked Unity.
"Almost finished. The paper came to-day from Baltimore. The ground is
silver, and there are garlands of roses and a host of piping shepherds."
"Oh, lovely!" cried Unity. "But no shepherdesses?"
"Yes, in among the roses. It is quite Arcadian. When will the princesses
come to see the shepherdesses?"
He looked at them both. "The Princess and her waiting-maid," said Unity
demurely, "will come very soon." She rose from the green bench. "The
waiting-maid is going now to her harpsichord!" Her eyes rested upon the
younger Cary. "Will you be so very good as to turn the leaves for me?"
Fairfax Cary embracing with alacrity the chance of goodness, the two
went into the house. The dusk deepened; the odour of honeysuckle and
syringa grew heavier, and white moths sailed by on their way to the
lighted windows.
"Since love--since love is blissful sorrow,
Then bid the lad--then bid the lad--
Then bid the lad a fair good morrow!"
flowed in soprano from the parlour.
Colonel Churchill laid down his pipe and lifted his burly figure from
the great chair. "I forgot," he remarked to Jacqueline, "to tell your
Aunt Nancy that Charles Carter is going to marry Miss Lewis," and he
left the porch. The rose in the sky turned to pearl, the fireflies grew
brilliant, and the wind brought the murmur of streams and the louder
rustling of the poplar leaves. "It is too dark to see the cards," said
Major Edward. "I'll go read what the Gazette has to say of Burr and the
Massachusetts secession fools. Don't move, Cary!" He deftly gathered up
the cards, and went indoors.
"When I was green in years, and every month was May"--sang Unity.
"With Phyllis and with Chloe made I holiday!"
"It is dark night," said Jacqueline. "Shall we not go in?"
Cary put out an appealing hand. "Don't rise! May we not stay like this a
little longer?--Miss Churchill, there is something that I ardently wish
to say to you."
"Yes, Mr. Cary?"
"It is too soon to speak, I know,--it must seem too soon to you. But
to-day I said, 'The spring is flying--I'll put my fortune to the touch!'
I think that you must guess the thing I wish to say--"
"Yes, I know. I wish that you would leave it unsaid."
"I love you. On the day, three months ago, when I saw you after my
return and found the lovely child I remembered changed into the
loveliest of all women, I loved you. If then, what now, when I have seen
you, day by day?--I love you, and I shall never cease to love you."
"Oh, with all my heart I wish that you did not!"
"I ask you to be my wife. I beg you to let me prove throughout my life
the depth of my love, of my solicitude for your happiness--"
"Ah, happiness!" cried Jacqueline sharply. "I do not see it in my life.
The best that you can do is to forget me quite."
"I will remember you when I draw my dying breath. And if we remember
after death, I will remember you then. With all my strength I love
you."
"I am sorry--I am sorry!" she cried. "Oh, I hoped 'twas but a fancy, and
that you would not speak! I do not love you--"
"Let me wait," said Cary, after a pause. "I said that I was speaking too
soon. Let me wait--let me prove to you. Your heart may turn."
She shook her head. "It will not change."
"Is there," asked Cary, in a low voice, "is there another before me?"
She looked at him strangely. "You have no right to question me. I do not
think that I shall ever marry. For you, you will live long and be happy.
You deserve happiness. If I have wounded you, may it soon heal! Forget
this night, and me."
"Forget!" said Cary. "I am not so lightly made! But neither will I
despair. I will wait. If there is no man before me, I will win you yet!
There is little reason, God knows, why you should care for me, but I
shall strive to make that reason greater!"
"There is reason," answered Jacqueline. "I think highly, highly of you!
You would make a woman happy;--all her life she would travel a sunny
road! I prize your friendship--I am loth to lose it. But as for
me,"--she locked her hands against her breast,--"there is that within me
that cries, _The shadowed road!--the shadowed road!"_
She rose, and Cary rose with her. "Forgive me," she said. "Is it not
cruel that we hurt each other so? Forgive--forget."
"I would forgive you," he answered, with emotion, "the suffering and the
sorrow of a thousand lives. But forget you--never! I'll love you well
and I'll love you long. Nor will I despair. To-night is dark, but the
sun may shine to-morrow. Think of me as of one who will love you to the
end." He took her hand and kissed it, then stood aside, saying, "I will
not face the lights quite yet." She passed into the hail and up the
stairway, and he turned and went down the porch steps into the May
night.